I think I am suffering from compulsive mail checking disorder. Whenever I am at a computer,

pine -i

is the single most executed command. Its like that guy from Verizon ads suffering from compulsive "can you hear me now?" disorder. Every fews steps he takes, he has to say "can you hear me now?". I was thinking, maybe I should alias my

pine

command to

echo "Go get a life, you pathetic moron". 

The plate is full next week, with Micro deadline and all. I want some parallel activity, maybe I will start reading a book, now that I am finally done with Silmarillion. Maybe Diamond Age.

I setup a bulletin board on my homepage .Not that I am expecting great activity on the board. It just provided me with a short period of fun, hacking up Fank's script to work for me.


On a different note, I was deemed fit to continue with Ph.D program by our department's faculty. I don't know whether thats going to make any big difference to my pace of research work. Oh well, one formality out of the way.


Here's a really cool optical illusion. Needs FLASH.

I thought this was pretty cool, live preview of html code.
It even understands "div" tags. Try <div class="captiontext">Test </div>

You type HTML in here:

...and the results should appear here:

I went batting today. I was barely able to hit the 65 mph ones the first time. Next time I went into the cage, I decided I won't try to swing the bat, but just try to stop the ball, kind of like a cricket defense shot. I was quite good at that,and it helped me in getting used to the pace. In the last few pitches, I went for the swing and was able connect two or three times. It was pretty cool.


And then I went bowling. This was my first time. I got a score of 82. Well, Nate says 82 isn't terrribly bad for a first timer. I even made 2 strikes. Ok, I suck. Anyway, I liked bowling, should do it again some other time.


On the research front, I am back into Java code writing mode, for the new compiler our group is trying to build. Summer is going to be kind of busy, lot of stuff on my plate. Hmm..I am already longing for a break.

Ha, I managed to get my recent del.icio.us links show up here. Check out the box on the left.

If anyone's watching, checkout my new template. There are no images to get the cool curvy corners, just some neat CSS tricks. I would like to acknowledge the original site from which I cogged the idea, but I have not bookmarked it.

Today, I had whats called "preliminary examination". I basically had to make a presentation about the research I had done in past 2 years to 3 faculty members and they judge whether I am fit to continue in the Ph.D program. It went on well, I guess. Well, I will get to know how close my guess is in a couple of weeks. On the bright side, its over, and I am really relaxed now.

I got rid of Haloscan to do my commenting. I installed the open source commenting system from Blogspeak . I don't expect anyone leaving comments on my website, but it was fun installing the script and trying it out. May be I am spending too much time on useless, non-consequential stuff..

I registered with Haloscan to add commenting to my website. One can now annotate any of my pages with comments. I really should have written my own code, it seems easy. Oh, well. I will do it some other time, I guess.
I also wanted to add my del.icio.us links to my site, but I couldn't get the del.icio.us server to send me 304 response when I send If-Modified-Since header entry in the HTTP request. I don't want every page display on my site making a full download of my links from del.icio.us.

Next week is going to be moderately busy, with a report due, and I have to practice for my prelims talk. Prelims is a major milestone for lot of grad students, but with the CGO paper, it seems a mere formality for me. Unless, of course the examiners are going to make it difficult, and screw me over. Let's see..